Saturday, January 29, 2011

Ill Intent has Roman holiday

Petersfield's Ill Intent pub is closed on Monday and Tuesday to facilitate investigation into the Roman remains that were inadvertantly uncovered in College Street almost a year ago.

Newswire exclusively brought you this story back in February 2010 when the road started to decay and Roman tesserae were exposed.

News of the find reached Channel 4's Time Team and now Baldrick is in town to establish what historical remains exist beneath the pub.

Claudia Upforanorgy, Petersfield's very popular historian, told Newswire: "This is really exciting stuff. These days, any discovery of Roman architectural remains tend to be in remote locations, taking the form of small settlements and farms; this has the potential to be far more significant.

"The tesserae uncovered last year were of high quality and we expect any foundations to be in line with that evidence."

We asked the landlord of the Ill Intent what he thought of the disruption.

"We don't mind" he told us. "We get our pub on the telly, you can't buy advertising like that. We also get new carpets throughout which will more than compensate for a couple of days lost trade.

"We simply have to cross our fingers that they don't find anything really significant that means we have to close down."

We asked Upforanorgy if she had any theories regarding the site.

"Well yes", she told us. "Often the types of building that exist in an area don't vary much over the millenia. Whatever suited this environment two thousand years ago may well have been the same as exist here today".

We asked her to be a little more specific, did she mean a town?

"I'd be bolder than that," she boasted. "I'd be prepared to predict that we might uncover the remains of an inn, an exclusive and expensive dental practice, and if we are really lucky the remains of a neglected building with a chariot park that charged perhaps as much as 2,000,000 Dinar per day."